Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China

"[Rachel] DeWoskin's memoir takes its title from a popular Chinese soap opera in which she starred in the mid-nineties ... cast as Jiexi, a sexually liberated American girl who embodies China's simultaneous excitement at and nervousness about the spread of Western influence (she seduces a married Chinese man). DeWoskin's cleverly layered account thus charts parallel culture clashes, one that she experiences as a Western woman in modern China, and the other, a TV-ready version of the first, tailored to Chinese expectations. The daughter of a Sinologist, DeWoskin has considerable cultural and linguistic resources."—The New Yorker